No Revelation in Rome

As the international Synod of Bishops went into its final days in Rome last week, some Catholics still clung to the hope that it would somehow prove a dramatic sequel to the Second Vatican Council. Close by the Vatican's new audience hall, where the prelates conferred in splendid isolation, liberals who wanted definitive reforms manned command posts and held daily press briefings. Those who think Pope Paul is not traditional enough pressed for a more conservative line. Members of the right wing's yippie element lobbied in their own way by sloshing paint on the coats of arms of two liberal cardinals.

In the end there was no new revelation on how the church could deal with its pressing problems (see TIME ESSAY, opposite). The synod is a sounding board, not a legislature. The Pope summons it, sets its agenda, and decides what to do with its recommendations. This fall it has merely affirmed --and in some cases lagged behind--positions Pope Paul has already taken.

Significant Margin. There was no surprise in last week's vote on maintaining the rule of celibacy for priests--the most sensitive issue under debate. But the margin of victory was so lopsided as to close the question: 168 bishops voted yes; 21 said yes pending amendments, and only ten said no.

A halfway measure to widen ordination of already married men got nowhere, although it produced last week's liveliest discussion. Liberals had hoped that such ordination would be urged for countries where priests are in short supply. The final wording, however, left the matter wholly up to the Pope. Conservatives and liberals alike were disgruntled by confused synod procedures. Said Archbishop Joachim Ndayen of the Central African Republic: "We didn't come thousands of kilometers to dance a farandole."

While the bishops upheld Paul's conservatism on church matters, on their other big issue, social justice, they were struggling to catch up with the liberal stand he took in an encyclical as long ago as 1967. Their final document, "Justice in the World," consisted largely of bland generalities on such topics as economics and ecology, and was sent to the Pope without public release. It protested "injustices deprived of a voice," but stopped short of citing specific situations such as those in Brazil and South Africa. On the population problem, the statement suggested that abortion and the "unjust imposition" of contraception could be equated with war as violations of "the right to life."

The bishops also attempted to apply improved standards of justice within the church. Women, they declared, should have a role of "responsibility and participation" in the church as well as society. But they excised the word "equal," which might have been construed as a vote for female priests.

Ukrainian Defiance. More significant than any of the synod's actions was the result of a mail ballot by bishops round the world. It handed a thumping defeat to the proposed text of a church "constitution," a preamble to the new code of canon law. The document, known as the Lex Fundamentalis, had been the target of a sustained assault by progressives because of its emphasis on authoritarian aspects of the church (TIME, Aug. 30).

Still, the month's only dramatic action came not from much-publicized liberal quarters, but from the church's Ukrainian hierarchy. Exiled Josyf Cardinal Slipyi took the synod floor to break an eight-year silence over the persecution of the 4,500,000 Roman Catholic Ukrainians, who have been forced into Eastern Orthodoxy by the Soviet regime. They have, he said, "sacrificed rivers of blood and mountains of bodies because of their fidelity to the Apostolic See, but they are defended by no one"--an obvious attack on Pope Paul's diplomatic Ostpolitik. The Ukrainians want an independent patriarchate, but the Vatican has refused because modern patriarchates are national churches. This would give encouragement to Ukrainian separatism, upsetting Vatican diplomacy toward Communism and the Russian Orthodox Church. In desperation, Slipyi and 14 bishops defied papal orders and held a well-planned rump "synod" of their own, with moral support from 150 Ukrainian laymen who flew in from North America by chartered plane.

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